Friday 14 December 2012

memoir writers homework-a funeral.

Outside,the day was a perfect spring day,the kind that would count as one of a handful of very best days ever.It was the middle of May,cloudless,and neither hot nor cold,but warm,with a slight,fresh breeze.Enough of a breeze to blow away most of the coal smoke that sometimes lingered over Springhill.The trees were newly green and everything was in bloom.

Browns Funeral Home was located on the hill,off Main Street.Like the rest of Springhill,it looked a little less than prosperous.We entered what I would call a large parlor.I certainly wasn't a church.I don't recall seeing any Bibles or songbooks or crosses.There were benches of some sort,but they certainly weren't pews.The casket was at the front of the parlor,not in the center,but to the right as you faced the front.It was open,and inside was the first dead person I'd ever seen.He was dressed in a suit,better than the old gray trousers,gray tweed coat,gray hat and white shirt I'd always remembered him to wear when he was among the living.On that day he looked like a gentleman of some means.There was a flower of some sort,a carnation perhaps fixed to his left lapel.Were you supposed to touch the dead,I wondered.I could,I suppose,touch his hand.I wondered what it would feel like,and I wondered too,if anyone would take offense.

There might have been singing,and most likely a eulogy spoken by someone,though I really don't recall them.As far as I know,my grandfather never graced the inside of a church,so maybe there were no hymns,and ,if there were I'm sure they seemed out of place.All that I can really recall was my father explaining to me that the white flower on my grandfathers lapel had been placed there collectively by his grandchildren,and I recall one of my older cousins crying hysterically behind me,so that she was led away into a private room for a while.

My grandfather died in 1974.I'd last seen him at my Uncle Bill's place about a month before.He had just returned from Albert and everyone remarked how well he looked.I didn't think so.I thought he looked tired.Then he moved into a rooming house in Springhill,where,one night he fell on the stairs and broke a hip.A few days later his heart stopped.At the time of his death,he was an enigma to me.There was so much about the man I didn't understand,and still don't.What I was really wondering about on that day was Heaven and Hell,and where my grandfather had gone,were all that I was told about such places true.

There was a reception later ,at my grandmothers flat,down in the low part of Springhill,close to where the mines used to be.All I recall was that there was a lot of food and a lot of people coming and going all day.And outside,it was the most perfect of days.

No comments:

Post a Comment